Page:Letters of Life.djvu/381

Rh as rhymers, it was expressly stipulated that it must be original. Sometimes there would be a mass of these cormorant tax-gatherers in the house at the same time. To refuse compliance was accounted an offence, or an insult. I commuted the matter with my imperative engagements as well as I could, by setting aside a peculiar portion of time for these enforced subsidies. Happily this custom is now obsolete, having been merged in the slighter impost of autographs.

I feel an inclination to give you a few extracts from the manuscript catalogue before alluded to, which was not long continued. Perhaps they may amuse you, my sweetly patient friend.

Some of them, you will observe, are not strictly poetical requisitions, but sprang from a position among poets.

Requested to write dedication poems for three nicely-bound albums, brought by strangers.

To ascertain and send an account of the comparative reputation, and terms of tuition and state of health of the female seminaries in this city, for a gentleman in a distant State who was thinking of sending a daughter to some boarding-school.

To write an ode for the wedding of people in Maine, of whom I had never heard; the only fact mentioned by the expectant bridegroom, author of the letter, being that his chosen one was the youngest of ten brothers and sisters.